Nearly 3,400 runners from six different states and five top 25 teams competed at the 57th annual Trinity and Valkyrie Invitational at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park Saturday morning. The event is Kentucky’s oldest cross country meet.

Girls

Assumption’s Bailey Davis and Katherine Receveur came in first and second place in the individual race but nationally ranked Carmel (IN) won the Valkyrie Invitational with a team score of 34. The Rockets earned a team score of 82 while Sacred Heart came in 9th place overall.

The Rocket’s Davis won the event with a time of 17:46 while Receveur crossed the finish line one second later. The teammates didn’t take control of the race until the very end.

“At the beginning of the race, Katherine and I stayed right behind the front pack. At the one mile marker coach Barry Haworth told us told to speed up and start moving up,” said Davis. “We started slowly and passed girl after girl together. By the time the last mile showed up, we were in the top three and it was a sprint to the finish line. Winning the race is really exciting because I have never won a race before”

Haworth talked about coaching Davis and Recevur during the race so that they could move up to the front of the pack.

“During the race it’s basically get out fast and hang on. I wanted them to stay near the front so that there’s a possibility that you can beat people,” said Hayworth. “If you aren’t with people, you can’t beat them. I told them to stay with those girls because my girls know this course. The other girls don’t know the course. They’re going to be antsy about where the finish line is, so I told them to sprint with about a quarter of a mile left. If they sprint with you, then it may be a fight, if not then it may be easier.”

This is just the beginning for Haworth’s Rockets. Their main group of runners sat out the Tiger run so this was their first race of the season.

“This is a first step for us. Where we go from here is that we look at our grouping and close it up,” said Hayworth. “Some of the girls didn’t run as well as they were hoping but that’s okay. Now we need to see how we can close the gap between our first and seventh runner. Now that we know how we stand, we can move people up accordingly.”

Maggie Allen led Sacred Heart by finishing in 8th place.

Boys

Senior Jacob Thomson from Holy Cross won the boys individual race while St. Xavier made noise in winning the team event with a score of 79. Nationally ranked Carmel (IN) scored 81 points to finish in second while Trinity finished in a respectable seventh place with 278 points.

Thomson continues to amaze people as he smashed a meet record by five seconds with a time of 14:52.

“Today I basically leaped from the gun. A lot of the runners here are nationally ranked and I wanted to show everybody that I’m not scared of anybody,” said Thomson. “It’s an honor to win the oldest meet in Kentucky. A lot of the winners have gone onto run in the NCAA’s and pros. This is the reward since I’ve been running 50 miles a week for the past ten weeks.”

St. Xavier’s Sam Lewis (7th) was the only Tiger who came in the top ten. Connor Sheryak (11th), Nick Reader (16th), Chris Striegel (25th), Thomas Cave (30th), and Max Mudd (38th) helped the Tigers bring home the win. St. X head coach Chuck Medley was thrilled about the victory.

“Getting six guys in the top 39 is pretty good. Carmel is in the top five and a lot of these teams are nationally ranked,” said Medley. “This is the greatest in season victory for St. X cross country ever. It’s just amazing. We will build off this victory by continuing to work hard for the next few weeks and start resting just before regionals so we can prepare for the state meet.”

Trinity senior Evan Hancock led the 7th place Rocks by coming in 43rd place. However, that does not concern head coach Chad Waggoner. Several of the Rocks performed well in the junior varsity race.

“I’m happy with our pace. We need to get faster,” said Waggoner. “We aren’t satisfied with being a big fish in a small pond. We want to go after the all the other big fish in the other big pond. But it’s only September 15th so we have two months to go before it counts. But before then we have a lot of work to do. I was really impressed with some of our JV runners. Jake Hallion and Evan Lang had big days and would have been in our top seven if they had run in the varsity race.”